At 1:15 PM -0500 11/9/02, Darcy James Argue wrote:
Good lord, what on earth does Billie's suitability as a "role model" have to do with anything?When you are dealing with fourth through sixth graders, it has a lot to do with it. She is "contemporary" enough, and has a sordid enough story that I don't want any young people (girls especially) to think that a) it's OK to be a junkie loser because you can STILL be famous and -- ta DAH -- a COMPOSER!!!! AND b) you can be revered as a COMPOSER even though you didn't write the music yourself, but just had an idea you kind of hummed and hinted at to the piano player... I mean, come on... with all the great contemporary women who write wonderful music and all the fabulous African American composers, they chose HER?!!
Now Billie is a great artist, and if she were introduced to the kids as just that, and her recordings played for them, that would be terrific, in my book. She was quite wonderful, and certainly unique. But in a program where the other composers range from Stravinsky to Bartok to Beethoven to Copland to Scriabin to ... well you get the picture... and where there are biographical sections and the composers are put into their environment and their social situation, in order to tell students more about them (can you imagine the dance they had to do around Billie's story..). well, I'm sorry. Our Billie doesn't belong on that list, and it depressed me, particularly as the committee was SO happy that they had been able to cover both women and African Americans with one (low) blow. It made me want to throw up.
And I already said in my earlier post I was nitpicking and that "Before someone points out that neither were many of the dead, white, male composers "good role models," let me hasten to say that my objection was that this was the ONLY example of a woman and an African American they could come up with.."
AND I said ". . . let me just admit that I am nitpicking, being rigid and narrow in my definition of the term "composer". Guilty as charged."
I knew what the response, if any, would be. So be it.
Linda
--
Hear the music at:
http://www.ganymuse.com/
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